This Blog is dedicated to the men who served in the segregated regiments of the 9th and 10th Cavalries and 24th and 25th Infantries from 1866 to 1951.
The GLAAC newsletter "BUGLE CALL" is now archived at this blog. Look for post dated December 28, 2010 to find back issues of our newsletter.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Yes Joshua, there still are Buffalo Soldier.

The following is a fictionalized account of an event that did not really take place. But then, isn’t that what fictionalize means? Anyway, because this is the holiday season, and after meeting the little trooper, Joshua Sims, I thought I would have some fun with an editorial by newsman, Francis Pharcellus Church. Mr. Church wrote a response to a letter from a little 8-year old girl named Virginia. His editorial was published in New York’s “The Sun” newspaper on September 21, 1897. It has become known as, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause,” and it is a reminder that the Holiday Season is truly a time for our children. So, without further adieu I give you:

“Yes, Joshua there still are Buffalo Soldiers.”

Dear Editor: I am a 3rd grader at the C.L.A.S. Charter School. This past October I dressed as a Buffalo Soldier for our Fall Festival. All my little friends told me that there were no more Buffalo Soldiers. I asked my mother and she said, “If you read it in the BUGLE CALL it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, are there still Buffalo Soldiers?

Joshua Sims

Los Angeles, CA.

Joshua, your little friends are wrong. They have been deprived by a lack of books, movies and programming that should be available to cover the rich history that is the Buffalo Soldiers. They have been affected by an institutionalized attempt to withhold the contributions of African Americans to the development, growth and protection of this great nation. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Joshua, whether they be man’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Joshua, there still are Buffalo Soldiers. They exists as surely as devotion, unselfishness, generosity and love for this country exists, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How different would the world be if there never were any Buffalo Soldiers? If would be as different as if there never was a Joshua. There would be no childlike faith then, no childlike curiosity and infinite imagination to make tolerable this existence. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Without the Buffalo Soldiers there would be no Tuskegee Airmen, no Montfort Point Marines and no Triple Nickel Parachute Unit; there would be no Navajo Code Talkers or 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated regiment in the history of the United States armed forces and they were made up of Japanese Americans. Without the Buffalo Soldiers there would be no minorities or women in the military. The Buffalo Soldiers were the first minorities to serve in the regular peacetime military and they opened the door for all the minorities who came after them.

Joshua, the number of original Buffalo Soldiers gets smaller everyday. They are the last of our World War II and Korean War veterans. But even after the last one of them has gone, the Buffalo Soldiers will continue to exist. They will exist because of you Joshua and children like you. When you dress-up as a Buffalo Soldier you are helping to keep their memory alive. When your friends ask you who were the Buffalo Soldiers, and you’re able to tell their story; you are helping to keep their legacy going. And when people are able to read the truth about the Buffalo Soldiers in the BUGLE CALL, I am helping to educate an uninformed populace about the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers and together Joshua, you and I will keep their memory alive.

1 comment:

Read the greatest 'historical novel', Rescue at Pine Ridge, the first generation of Buffalo Soldiers. The website is: http://www.rescueatpineridge.com This is the greatest story of Black Military History...5 stars Amazon Internationally, and Barnes & Noble. Youtube commercials are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD66NUKmZPs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVslyHmDy9A&feature=related

Rescue at Pine Ridge is the story of the rescue of the famed 7th Cavalry by the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers. The 7th Cavalry was entrapped again after the Little Big Horn Massacre, fourteen years later, the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre. If it wasn't for the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, there would of been a second massacre of the 7th Cavalry. This story is about, brutality, compassion, reprisal, bravery, heroism, redemption and gallantry.

You’ll enjoy the novel that embodies the Native Americans, Outlaws and African-American/Black soldiers, from the south to the north, in the days of the Native American Wars with the approaching United States of America.

The novel was taken from my mini-series movie with the same title, “RaPR” to keep the story alive. The movie so far has the interest of, Mr. Bill Duke, Hill Harper, Glynn Turman, James Whitmore Jr., Reginald T. Dorsey and a host of other major actors in which we are in talks with, in starring in this epic American story.

When you get a chance, also please visit our Alpha Wolf Production website at; http://www.alphawolfprods.com and see our other productions, like Stagecoach Mary, the first Black Woman to deliver mail for the US Postal System in Montana, in the 1890's, “spread the word”.

About Me

I am a Vietnam veteran, served in the US Navy for just about 12 years, trained as a Nuclear Technician and served onboard three Nuclear Submarines. My father, Trooper Frederick Douglass Jones, was a WWII veteran and a member of the US Army mounted cavalry regiments known as the Buffalo Solders.